


Andraste, Take the Wheel

by aban_asaara



Series: Shadows at Noontide [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Crush, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Pre-Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11539500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Her life doesn’t flash before her eyes as she expects it to—but then thereisa flash, a bolt of lyrium blue ripping through the air.Nearly plummeting to her death brings a thing or two into focus for Hawke.





	Andraste, Take the Wheel

Hawke hates the Wounded Coast.

Too many Tal-Vashoth, for one, not to mention the eye-numbing stretches of beige and gray, but worst of all is the _blasted sand_ that whips at her with every whoosh of the sea to wind up in places where sand has no bloody business.

So, it’s the last place she’d pick to fall to her death, but the edge of the cliff draws closer and closer as she staggers towards it after catching the toe of her boot on an innocuous root.

_Andraste, take the wheel_. Her life doesn’t flash before her eyes as she expects it to—and she really could’ve stood to see anything but the salt-slick spires clawing their way out of the whitewater—but then there _is_ a flash, a bolt of lyrium blue ripping through the air.

A tug on her arm, and she lurches away from the edge. “Fenris,” she breathes. He was twenty paces away last she looked, mere moments ago, but he’s right there against her now, the brushed-steel fingers of his gauntlets steady around her arm. “You startled me.”

And gruff, grumpy Fenris, suspicious of all mages (is that why he had an eye on her?), quirks up an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth. A twitch more than a smirk, really. “And you, me. Are you unhurt?”

“Never been better,” she replies in a shocked squeak that falls short—short and flat on its face—from the nonchalance she aimed for.

Fenris snorts in answer. The warmth of his palm is just starting to seep through her sleeve when a gust of salt wind and sea spray blows at them, sending the hair wild around his face. Three dots of lyrium adorn his forehead, she notices for the first time. He leads her away from the cliff, eyes narrowed to thin lines, head tucked into his shoulders against the gale.

Hawke doesn’t even have the sense to do as much. The wind howls past her as she follows him, yet she hears almost nothing but her heart hammering so hard it roars as one with the roiling sea.

“Thank you,” she tells the back of his head, since he’s already walking back to the others when it occurs to her she ought to. A spar of sun lands on his arm as he combs his fingers through his hair, lighting lyrium lines against darker skin that match the edge of his greatsword.

“My pleasure,” he answers from above his shoulder, not quite smiling, but there at the corners of his mouth is the promise that one day she might make him smile—and as she stands between the ragged scars of the coast and Fenris’s own, she decides she will.

“Hawke, we don’t have all day,” Aveline calls out, and Carver rolls his eyes at Hawke as she runs back to them.


End file.
